DevLearn Sessions

DevLearn 2017 has the biggest, most comprehensive, most cutting-edge learning technologies program in the world. The event includes over 200 sessions covering the critical topics that will help you develop new skills and expertise in the management, design, and development of technology-based learning.

Specialized Focuses

In addition to the great tracks at DevLearn 2017 Conference & Expo, there are a number of specialized sessions curated to help you put your skills into practice immediately.

Sessions on Thursday, October 26, 2017

When it comes to people development, 80% percent of what
companies need to address has nothing to do with their learning and talent
management technology! In fact, by focusing on the functionality and
limitations, these companies overlook the critical elements of creating an
engaging, personalized development program for their customers (internal and
external).

Chunking, bite-size, and micro: These are all terms you’ve
seen in training magazines and blogs, but what does it mean to shorten the
length of training content—specifically video? This session will explore what
it takes to successfully implement an end-to-end microvideo strategy.

The holy grail of learning is undoubtedly behavior change.
It’s said that learning can only be proved when behaviors are affected and one
can see an evidenced change in practice. But how realistic is genuine behavior
change in a learning program?

In those first few weeks, new hires feel excitement,
uncertainty, enthusiasm, and discomfort. It can be a roller coaster ride! Line
manager engagement has a significantly beneficial impact on new hires’ learning
curve and sense of belonging; however, managers are often stretched with
multiple responsibilities, and new starters’ needs are relegated.

When it comes to accurately identifying skill strengths and gaps
in a team, many organizations struggle. Typically these decisions are
gut-driven rather than based in analytics, and as a result, they often aren’t
as effective as they could be. While many organizations want these decisions to
be more data-based, it’s not uncommon for them to not know how or where to pull
the data needed to create the most successful teams possible.

Page-turners, cluttered slides, click Next to continue, and
complex menus. These are all words and phrases that you’ll often hear when your
users and colleagues discuss what’s frustrating about eLearning. If your users
can’t easily navigate through your content or can’t find what they need exactly
when they need it, that means they can miss some, or even all, of your
important content. The good news is, you can calm that clutter and
inconsistency with great UI design.

Technology continues to advance rapidly, changing how we live and
interact with the world around us. Today’s learning professionals face the
challenge of staying ahead of this curve and tracking the technologies that are
shaping the future of organizational learning, while at the same time
recognizing technologies that may be more of a passing fad.

There has been a lot of hype around games for learning. As a
result, games are increasingly used in L&D, but many of these games simply
target low-level learning using frames such as Jeopardy or Concentration
and have only had minimal impact. There is a need to maximize the value from
this approach, and to do this you need to design games that support learning
objectives and apply proven instructional methods. And to do this well, you need
to understand what the research says about the instructional value of games.

Creating and distributing simulation-based training is
challenging. Developing a script and storyboard that accurately replicates an
authentic environment requires special considerations outside of more
traditional mediums used for learning. Acquiring and coordinating talent,
equipment, and development skills can take a significant amount of time and
resources. With all these barriers, it’s no surprise that the intimidation
factor discourages many organizations from developing their own 360-degree
video assets, preventing an immersive training experience.

There is some debate about whether personas (or learner profiles,
as they’re more commonly known in L&D) are a help or a hindrance. Some
argue that personas can end up being a representation of what designers wish their users were like, rather than
a true reflection of the users, or that they create distance between designers
and users. But others push back on this idea, stating that—when used
thoughtfully—personas can increase your empathy for the people you’re designing
for, allowing you to keep your work tightly focused on the real needs of your
audience and to craft the most effective experiences for them.

The cost of copyright confusion can affect every stage of the
development and delivery process. How much does fear or avoidance inform your
decision-making when it comes to finding and using online media? Have you
missed out on using fabulous free resources because you weren’t (or your
organization wasn’t) sure whether you had the rights to use them? Have you seen
others accidentally infringe on someone else’s work because of a
misunderstanding about fair use? Copyright can seem like a daunting or boring
topic to learn—but it doesn’t have to be.

More and more people are learning online, independently and at
different times. However, in much of the knowledge transfer that occurs, the “learning”
is still passed from person to person through social learning. But in L&D it’s
not enough to simply bring people together, facilitate learning, and hope for
the best. You’ll want to know whether this social learning is effective and how
it impacts performance on the job.

U.S. News and
World Report named alternative credentials one of the top
five education trends to watch in 2017. IBM and Microsoft are leading this
trend by offering career-oriented training and learning pathways, as an
alternative to traditional universities and in partnership with universities
worldwide. Learners who demonstrate knowledge and competency earn open badges
that are easily shared to job sites and professional networks like LinkedIn.

Organizational learning is increasingly becoming a blend of
multiple assets from a wide variety of resources. How do you combine YouTube videos,
a learning vendor course, an SME white paper and PowerPoint, an internal presentation
recording, conference proceedings, and other resources into an effective
learner experience that you can track and report on? The simple answer is to
use a learning stack with a content aggregation front end. But what does that
mean?

Caterpillar has a proud history of working with independent
dealers to distribute and service its machinery and equipment. However,
delivering consistent customer service through a network of global dealers is a
huge challenge. Recognizing the need to focus on people development, they
decided to build a technology ecosystem that would modernize dealer learning
and development on mobile, provide seamless collaboration and communication,
and supply real-time data and insights.

Screencasting is a great way to deliver software training, but that’s
not the only use for this approach to multimedia creation. What about using it
to create internal production resources by documenting your own development
processes? Or how about leveraging it to create other video resources, like a
reusable eLearning asset library? There is a wide range of other uses for
screencasting that you may never have thought of, and incorporating these uses can
make a real difference in your daily workflow.

Audiences today expect richer multimedia in their online
experiences. As a result, it seems like producing videos, podcasts, animation,
interactive video, or some other sort of multimedia is on every eLearning team’s
mind. However, few are ready to launch into production without first building
their knowledge about producing effective multimedia, much less submit a
request for video and audio equipment or software without having a good plan in
place.

Shrinking budgets and constrained resources have made it more
important than ever to make the most of the resources you have when designing
learning experiences. Thankfully, the increasing availability of cloud-based
applications and other free tools makes it easier than ever to create and
develop learning experiences that don’t have to cost a bundle.

Articulate Storyline is easy to learn, which means many people can
get pretty far along with little to no help. However, when you pick up a tool
this way, sometimes you learn the harder, more time-consuming approaches to tasks
and miss out on the tricks that experts use to save time and effort.

While it’s great that Adobe Captivate provides the tools to make a
mobile learning course quickly, unfortunately this doesn’t mean everything will
automatically work well. If you’re not careful, you might create something that
technically can be viewed on a mobile device, but is missing key functionality
or just isn’t a good experience on mobile. This can create serious user
frustration and lead to people disengaging from what you’ve built (or even not
finishing it at all).

Some of the most forward-leaning companies have embraced
hackathons to promote innovation. A hackathon is an event where, within a
finite amount of time, creatives get together in small teams to design, build,
and demo a new product or feature. But how do you get people involved? How do you
run a hackathon if you have never done it before? What if you don’t have 24 to
48 hours to run one?

What’s the reality of building virtual reality? The increasing
accessibility of VR technology holds powerful promise for learning, but it demands
a new approach to creation and construction. VR can deliver uniquely immersive
and experiential education, but applied use cases are in their early stages. What
new techniques for creation and implementation can you adopt from successful VR
learning experiences?

In recent years, the notion of leveraging video for streamlining learning
has gained significant traction. For instance, in the flipped classroom
approach, people watch short videos introducing them to the content before an in-person or virtual class
experience, freeing up class time for them to apply the knowledge they’ve
gained. However, successfully using this approach requires careful preparation
and often demands that instructional designers, instructors, or facilitators master
skills related to video production, involving a time commitment that can
discourage these time-strapped L&D professionals from experimenting with
this innovative technique.

eLearning Brothers executive director Bill West talks to the legendary Dr. Michael Allen about the insights he’s had since publishing his first Guide to e-Learning and the simplifying concepts and procedures he’s included in his second edition.

Technology has advanced far beyond the
simple ability to assign and track courses. Have we kept up with the pace? How
do we deliver significance, immediacy, and relevancy to people within
organizations and empower them to achieve more than they ever have before?
Today’s complex challenges require dynamic breakthrough solutions.

Are big data and analytics really the answer to all your
learning and development challenges? No, they’re just a distraction from the
real issue. You need to get information and data in the hands of those who make
decisions daily. What would our learning and development world look like if we
revolutionized reporting and made talent data available to learners, managers,
and administrators and simplified their decision-making process? It’s called
information visualization.

How can you help learners feel connected during asynchronous
experiences? How can you tailor a standard eLearning experience in a way that makes
it feel personalized? How can orientation be standardized without losing its
impact? Could you, in your wildest dreams, imagine your compliance eLearning
courses being completed by word of mouth and recommendations alone?

This session will focus on the learning GlobalEnglish
experienced during the development of a new mobile app. Presenters will explore
what motivated the company to develop a new app, the approach they took, and
what they learned along the way.

Respected industry analyst Josh Bersin has highlighted that
more companies are choosing to turn their learning management systems “off.”
When the inevitable five- to seven-year cycle of replacing the LMS comes up for
discussion, more and more companies are simply not bothering to replace the old
with the new.

Articulate knows that eLearning developers like you face
consistent challenges: Creating engaging courses that look great on mobile
devices. Developing great-looking eLearning without a budget. Iterating on
courses with SMEs. And developing your skills.

Andrew Scivally hosts John Blackmon of Trivantis, Akshay Bharadwaj
of Adobe, Michael Alcock of gomo, and others to discuss what the future of
eLearning authoring will look like in the next decade. How far will we advance?
What major pitfalls can we aim to avoid? And what’s it going to take to advance
the industry?

Virtual learning sessions can be engaging ways to reach a wide and
dispersed audience, but the skills you need to successfully plan and produce
them are distinctly different from those you need for in-class sessions or
other learning experiences. When planning to adopt virtual classroom platforms
for learning sessions, successful organizations need a clear idea of what
management, design, delivery, and technical issues to consider.

Aerial work platforms provide access so people can work safely at
high heights. You see these machines everywhere, and the operators are
everywhere. Companies need skilled operators to ensure the machines are used
safely. But learning how to operate the machines on the job site can put people
at risk, both in the machine and on the ground.

At IBM, learning content and delivery strategy must adjust to meet
rapidly changing technology, job roles, and learner needs. With cloud-based
solutions and software-as-a-service, the need for new formats, new methodologies,
and continuous learning has grown. Instructional designers have become learning
experience architects, helping orchestrate the massive amount of learning
content for IBM clients and providing a more personalized learning solution.

Few learners or teachers enjoy eLearning content or training
presentations, mainly because they’re presented in a way that is dull and
boring. Lots of text is for documents, but presentations with big pictures and
a few words don’t work either, as they only provide a pretty backdrop. People
are crying out for courseware that adds to what the presenter is saying, or
eLearning that keeps the learner engaged.

Who cares how many people attended your training? No, really, who
cares? If someone does, then it’s an important metric. However, your
stakeholder is probably more interested in behavior change: How much did the
employee apply what they learned to their job, and how has performance improved?

When you ask people about their top three roadblocks when trying
to create engaging eLearning, one of them is always budgetary constraints. Instructional
designers often have bigger ideas than their budgets will allow. This has
certainly been my experience, but over the years, I’ve found ways to get around
this by using free and low-cost resources and good old-fashioned DIY.

Companies are always looking for innovative methods to convey
training content. Particularly in professional roles where training is costly,
complicated, or even dangerous, there is a strong need for technology-enabled
training that’s easily repeatable and cost-effective. Scalability is just part
of the puzzle—content also needs to be designed for accuracy, immersion, and
efficacy so that trainers can provide impactful training experiences with high
fidelity to the actual task.

Not all games are created equal, and preparation of instructional
content for games is an important consideration. How can you (in practical
terms) harness the positive attributes of games, including the fun of play, to
produce effective and efficient learning?

Many instructional designers and trainers are stuck in the rut of
event-driven learning, whether that means eLearning courses, face-to-face
sessions, or virtual training sessions. You probably know that varied, spaced
learning delivers better results, but many people find it hard to put this into
action.

Many people have helpful information to share
with others, but the idea of writing a book can seem overwhelming. Even if the
writing itself is something you are confident about, the “getting published” part
can be difficult. Working with major publication companies is challenging and takes
a lot of time; by the time a published book gets out into the world, some
information might even be out of date!

Keeping training assets current with a constant cycle of releases
is a significant drain on resources. Release notes must be scoured for changes,
and corresponding workflows identified and prioritized by customer impact,
before training content can be updated. This session is a case study of the
tools and procedures developed by the product education team at athenahealth to
automate this process and more efficiently update assets affected by each
release.

Onboarding shouldn’t be an impersonal and disconnected experience.
But today’s workforce is diverse and often dispersed globally, making it difficult
for new employees to feel connected. At HDR, an engineering firm, new employees
felt isolated and unable to make meaningful connections during onboarding. The
result was a lack of engagement and motivation to complete required training.
HDR needed a way to build connectivity and accountability into learning and
onboarding.

The role of the learning developer is expanding in scope and
responsibility. Today’s learning professionals need to know how to deliver
useful content at the time of need. They have to take into account the complete
user experience, including user context, device capabilities and limitations,
mobile interface design, and audience personas. How does a developer know the
best tools to create solutions that translate into a memorable user experience?

Communities of practice (CoPs) have become a hot topic in the past
few years. They are an excellent tool for developing skills, sharing tacit
knowledge, and shoring up retention of high-performing staff. But they differ
from teams and other types of groups in many ways. Understanding what CoPs are
and how they work—rather than just looking at how to create and manage them—is
critical to supporting their success.

As with any team effort, course development projects have specific
players with specific functions designed to work cohesively toward one
objective: satisfactorily completing on time within budget. It never fails,
however, that a new requirement sneaks in at the goal line, forcing designers
to scramble for time and resources. What if you could strategize an offense
that converts potential obstacles into assets?

Digital learning has arrived, but the learning community is still
playing catch-up. When looking at where the L&D industry is going in the
future, you need to address two key strategic questions: How can digital learning
demonstrate greater value to learners and the business, and how do L&D professionals
need to adjust their approaches to learning in order to deliver that greater
value through digital learning?

Stories have the power to move people. They allow the storyteller
to forge a personal connection with the audience and create a situation where
promoting learning and inspiration becomes infinitely easier. At their core,
stories create a world where learners are interested, are engaged, and want to learn, which leads to higher
retention of information and better understanding of concepts and ideas. But
how do you design a good story?

What separates amateur video from professionally
shot and edited video presentations? Many in eLearning would be quick to blame
small budgets and lack of equipment for less-than-professional video. However,
the real problem is that many who shoot, composite, or produce video for
learning aren’t visually literate. In other words, they don’t know the basics
of visual design and how to apply it to the video medium.

The delivery of personalized online training has yet to match the
advantages of individual instructor-led training. Most online learning
approaches lack the dynamism and customization they need for a learning
experience tailored to individuals. Currently, online learning methods rely on
adaptive content delivery that falls short of delivering a unique teaching
experience. There is a need for a new generation of teaching machines that
actually learn from students using artificial intelligence.

You have been hearing about the Experience API (xAPI) for years.
You know what it does and the benefits it brings, but how do you use it? Where
do you start? Where can you see samples? What kind of data can you send over?
In this working session, you won’t just hear about xAPI; you’ll start learning
how to use it with any of your HTML5 files.

Feedback may be your most under-leveraged instructional
tool. Designers take care to ensure assessment questions are well-written and
support the performance objectives. However, far too often less thought is
given to feedback.

What does the future look like for learning systems? There is no
question that we are in the midst of a revolution in learning systems. Whether
it is the big vendors making dramatic changes to their products or new startups
that are disrupting the industry, tools are changing. How can you be sure you
have the right tools to impact the future of your business?

As an eLearning developer or instructional designer, you
want your projects to be done faster and look better, all while you have less
time and budget at your disposal. Using templates is a very attractive option,
but you don’t want your course to look like something “off the shelf.”

Talent has now become the number-one priority for organizations.
And rightfully so: Professionals are making career decisions based on career
development opportunities, or the lack thereof. In fact, in a recent LinkedIn
survey, 94 percent of professionals said they’d be more likely to stay at an
organization that invested in career development. With skills rapidly evolving,
and the need to upskill the workforce at an all-time high, it’s never been a
more exciting time to be working in corporate learning and development. And
yet, more change is on the horizon.

Adobe Captivate is a commonly used tool, but a surprising number
of its features are just a bit hidden and not well known. The layers of
sophistication these features add can enable you to save a lot of time, deliver
more engaging and personalized learning, and tap into resources more easily. It’s
just a matter of knowing where these features are and how to use them
effectively.

xAPI shouldn’t be fear-inducing, and it isn’t! You can use HTML
and JavaScript to create statements to send to a learning record store (LRS).
With a little input, practice, and feedback, you’ll learn how easy it is to use
HTML and JavaScript to move your organization faster toward the future of
measurable experiences.

A large amount of research in recent years has explored the value that music has for the brain and learning. Everyone has experienced it in some way, be it from listening to music while studying, learning something from a catchy song, or learning to play an instrument.

Internal audit reports and consumer research revealed that employees
of Turkey’s largest private bank, Isbank, needed support to improve customer
service for a wide range of retail banking products and services. For Isbank’s
learning team, the challenge was finding an engaging, effective, and easily
accessible learning solution on detailed, complicated topics for a geographically
dispersed and demographically diverse workforce.

The former state of onboarding for investment professionals lacked
content and delivery flexibility in order to meet the needs of many variables
in the onboarding process. The new program provides flexibility to allow for
optimal learning effectiveness in moving the new associates to productivity as
rapidly as possible.

Find the sweet spot of learner engagement by combining the
bite-sized power of microlearning with the motivating effect of digital badges.
By chunking your content to create microlearning-style tutorials and using
digital badges to reward learners and mark their achievements, you will
increase learner persistence and success in your online courses!

Your client has just asked you to design an engaging eLearning
course. The content will be a challenge, which you like. You quickly come up
with a vision for the course: interactive, applicable, fun. You know instantly
this course will be your showpiece, an award winner. Then the client says, “We
need it to be accessible.” Your dream is dashed as you anticipate extra work
and no engagement. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

L&D professionals work hard to create great training and are
disappointed when employees fail to learn. It may be tempting to blame the
students, but L&D efforts usually fail because they don’t understand the
mind of the learner. As a result, you may build training modules that are not
consistent with the brain’s natural means of acquisition. Teaching can be more
effective once you understand how the learner’s mind operates.

As learners go mobile, demand for learning on phones has
increased. Yet options for delivering a responsive, mobile-first, and
interactive experience have been limited—until now! Join this interactive
session to learn how two organizations embrace an open-source tool to develop
elegant, impactful, and engaging learning. Learn how to take advantage of
technology, “Adapt” your approach to design and development, and embrace best
practices for interactive mobile learning.

Why do you do what you do? Who are you trying to train, and why
should they be there? The answer goes way beyond corporate compliance or skill-building
initiatives. The answer lies deep beneath the surface in the hearts and minds
of the people you are trying to train. But how do you find out what motivates
them and how to help them succeed?

Is the LMS dead? Can a combination of today’s mobile apps, social
interactions, and game-enabled microlearning replace yesterday’s “macrolearning”
platforms? Do training programs need to be so structured and prescriptive when
modern adaptive approaches are now a reality? The ever-evolving educational
technology landscape presents more choices than ever, but finding the right
solution in the deep and wide pool of possibility is no longer a game.

With a direct service delivery (DSD) national workforce that
ranges from tenured employees to those just entering the workforce, Farmer
Brothers—a national coffee roaster, wholesaler, and distributor—had to identify
how to optimize, standardize, and streamline sales training across a diverse,
geographically dispersed team. The company addressed how to preserve its legacy
of great customer service while simultaneously upskilling employees’ ability to
sell additional products.

L&D professionals often think about one single training
program only, instead of looking at the entire journey their learners take.
Mapping out the learner life cycle and assigning content that engages them
along the way not only helps create unforgettable learning experiences and
drive individual performance, but also helps with the transfer of knowledge
after a training session ends.

Many instructional designers and training specialists find
themselves in the position of creating print-ready learning materials on short
notice and no budget. Depending on available technologies, content knowledge,
and access to a graphic designer, this can be a daunting task. Plus, most
approaches used to create training-on-the-go are flat and forgettable. What if
there’s another option for designing print-ready learning materials in a short
amount of time for memorable learning?

You have two weeks to create a course, and your subject matter
expert wants it to be engaging. Your budget is $0 and you don’t have access to
any multimedia tools. Are you and your team ready for the challenge?

Finding ways to make learning “stick” with technology is always a
challenge. Augmented reality (AR) is one of those “make it stick” technology
options available for education and training. However, AR can seem
overwhelming, expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to use in everyday
learning development. It’s these assumptions that can cause designers and
developers to overlook the potential this technology holds for their learners,
which is a shame, as AR is becoming simpler and cheaper than ever to create.